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25 years Anniversary of the Paragliding World Cup Superfinal!

It all started in 1991 when on the 9th August 1991, the official Committee of the PWC was founded in Verbier. The first PWC series competitions that would follow the General ranking of the World cup were decided to begin from 1992. Throughout the year a number of tasks took place in Switzerland, Japan, France, Brazil and Italy according to FAI rules and regulations. The first president of the PWC was Otto Max Fischer.

The first Superfinal event in the history took place in the Owens Valley, USA. The first cake turned out a usual and you can read the detailed disillusioning report written by our indispensable Cross Country Magazine, placed at PWC website http://pwca.org. All participants can be called real heroes, but the three best of best were:

It is interesting to review the lives of these first PWC Superfinal winners during past 25 years:

Uli Wiesmeier (GER) won numerous national and international titles, including German champion in 2011 and 2013. Works as a photographer at http://uliwiesmeier.com/en/

Haari Urs (CH) apart from caring for his birds continued as NOVA test pilot, later opened his own company High adventure (https://www.highadventure.ch) – producer of Beamer reserves. XC Contest Overall Winner 2009.

When looking through the list of that memorable competition, we see such paragliding legends as Harry Buntz, Bruce Goldsmith, Steve Cox. Still remarkably low female participation, besides the only woman Nanou Berger (FRA) got to the 41st place and was not promoted to the next year. The 40 selected pilots were from Switzerland, which occupied almost 1/3 of the gaggle, Germany, Great Britain, Austria, France, Spain, Japan and the USA. There were 60 pilots taking part in the first PWC Superfinal.

Nowadays PWC has grown – it got over most of the difficulties. Pilots dream to get enrolled in the PWC. The number of participants each time is close to 150. In this Superfinal, we have got 2 women in the top 10!

For its 25th anniversary, PWC Association has made a celebration photo. As a tribute, and a mark of respect to the late (and very great) Xavier Murillo - the founding father of the whole thing – the organizers assembled as many of the previous World Cup winners that they could find in this competition. And there were as many as an impressive 29 people – they were still competing in this Superfinal.